Fair
by foxeran
Summary: [Abandoned] The War is coming, and everyone is being forced to take sides. Lighthearted things are being cast away in favor of darker magic, and no one really knows who to trust. What will come out of it more than a broken heart and a stab in the back?


He watched her in her lovesickness. She hid it well, but he could tell. Ron would be heartbroken if he found out, but he didn't pay attention enough. He saw the diary with its seemingly immaculate pages, but if you looked closer, you could see the copied songs and poems, looking for all the world like a homework assignment or notes, and very convincingly.

He wanted to approach her, but he feared she would shy away, enclosing herself in a shell, distancing herself further. Everybody was, it was like the new fashion. So many people were distancing themselves, so when the final blow came, maybe it wouldn't hurt _as much_. But here, she was one of the people brave enough to take whatever came her way, and people just thought she was doing the same as them, except she was doing for an entirely different reason.

He had slowly begun to heal over _him_ when she started to distance herself.

She knew he knew, though he didn't know this. She waited for him to come tell her what silly nonsense it was, but he never did, and so she drove the feelings deeper into herself, so they were embedded, but too deep for anyone else to notice.

Months passed. The final battle, at its utmost, was utterly gruesome and tormenting. Everyone had been hurt, no matter what they did to try to conceal the pain. The people that had been hit hardest were, surprising, the neutral. Both sides had tried to convince them to join their side, and sometimes resorted to force, in the case of the one side. Another surprising thing was _who_ turned out to be neutral.

She tied her dark brown hair up behind her into a short ponytail with one hand while she took a drink of the pumpkin juice that she had snuck from the kitchens with the other. Her manicured nails were short but well taken care of, practical and pretty.

The Common Room was well lit by numerous gloomy looking torches and a large silver fire. She shivered. Just because everyone thought the Slytherin Common Room was cold didn't mean it had to be, but there you had it. Silver flames were a specialty of Slytherin's wizards and witches because they gave off no heat but much light for the bearer of fire.

There was a knock on the door. Many looked up in confusion, for who would knock at the door? Everyone knew the password, and whoever wanted it shouldn't have been there, so no one answered it. A few minutes later, the Quidditch team trudged in, just back from practice, hot with sweat and cold from rain.

"Malfoy, was there anyone who was at the door just now?" called one of the younger boys.

Draco looked grim. "Yeah there was, actually. But it was just that quisling Harlot. We nearly beat him to a pulp, but he's still a Slytherin, so we let him go," he spat. A murmur of discontent ran throughout the room.

Jordan Harlot was a Slytherin boy, a fourth year, who suddenly decided that he disliked Slytherin and all of its people. He had sabotaged many of their Quidditch matches, seeing as he had been on the team, and did many things so Slytherin lost points. He was a hero in some eyes, and a traitor in others, of all houses. He had been the latest thing to gossip about among Houses. Now, he mainly hung out with a group of Ravenclaws and a few Hufflepuffs that thought it better to be loyal to your heart than to your house. Jordan still resided in Slytherin, unfortunately.

Draco leaned over her chair by the fire. "Pans… We need your extravagantly wonderful Chaser skills back on the team right now so we can kick sow Gryffindor arse…" he flattered, his voice dripping with noxiously sweet honey.

She laughed and smacked his wet forehead lightly. Feeling it, she warned forebodingly, "You better not keep practicing in these conditions, Draco… The whole team is going to get colds! Arse…"

She was not some clingy plaything of Draco Malfoy's, contrary to popular belief. As the years had passed, something had clicked into place and they had slowly become friends. She was just another girl to many, except with an unusually cutting tongue. She had short, dark brown hair that was just long enough to tie back, and light honey colored eyes.

He growled lightly, pretending to bite at the fingers which rested on his forehead. She smirked back, something she had picked up from him, then kissed his warm temples. "Get some rest, Draco. Tell the whole team, unless they want to suck in front of the whole team…"

He laughed. "Okay, okay, Pans. I'll tell 'em." So maybe they were more than friends. At least the relationship was heartfelt, not something trashy and one-night.

Slytherin was getting an entirely new reputation; there had been many changes. The people of Slytherin had become closer to each other, as a house, as a whole. Their ties to each other had become more closely woven. The Slytherins as a whole had also become tougher, meaner, and more suited to the times ahead than any of the other houses. Their sly and cunning had come in handy, along with their adaptability.

It was a few weeks into seventh year for the Golden Trio, and they had already been dumped with complex and cumbersome loads of homework to prepare them for the coming N.E.W.T.s. In the Gryffindor Common Room, seventh year students could be heard moaning and grumbling.

"Hermione, they give us so much! How can they expect us to finish it all so quickly?" asked Ron Weasley. "I mean, look at it all – there's piles of homework for each subject we took! Bloody hell…"

"Yeah," continued Harry Potter good-naturedly. "And what with Quidditch and the DA and the like, it's going to take even longer! That's not going to leave any time to really relax or play Chess or anything is it?"

"If you stop grumbling and start on it now, you can have all your Charms homework done by nine, because there isn't that much, and then you can get a start on your Transfiguration homework too, because that's much simpler than the Potions homework. See, I'm already done with my Charms, and halfway through Transfiguration because I got an early start," replied Hermione Granger sensibly.

"You know, it isn't particularly difficult, and I'm surprised. If you actually took the time to pay attention to what we were doing all these years, you'd see it's basically a quick but rigorous review of what we've done in the past six years, and it's easy if you can remember it all. Or if you can't, like me, it's all in the first few chapters of that book we had to get," commented Parvati Patil.

It was surprising to see who had stopped giggling and gossiping and had started to shape up and pay attention in class because they wanted to do well.

Hermione looked at Parvati oddly. Parvati laughed. "As you can see, Padma's been bugging me about this all summer, so I decided to stop procrastinating when she hid all my makeup. We made a deal and it's working out quite well for both of us…"

She looked thoughtful. "I got revenge, though…" At this, a wicked grin appeared. "I put some rather… pointy stucco in her bed. She complained for days after! She may be a princess yet!"

Hermione laughed. "What about Lavender?" she asked curiously.

Parvati grimaced. "Lavender hasn't taken the hint. She's still gossiping and chasing after guys and she thinks she'll be able to cobble something together the morning before. Well, I suppose it's okay because she doesn't want to do anything big after this. She just wants to run a world famous beauty parlor. I hope she achieves her dream…"

"What do you want to do Parvati?" asked Hermione curiously.

Parvati replied shyly, "I'd like to be a Healer after school. It's what I always have wanted to do, but I just realized what I would have to do to be one."

Hermione looked speculative, but returned to her work.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Thanks, guys. There have been a few slight changes made in this combination Prologue first chapter, so reread it to get the details, some of them are important! I will be posting a whole new chapter by the end of the day!


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